Wellington (New Zealand), Apr. 1 : India''s cricketers, it seems, will have a wicket of their choice when they meet New Zealand in the third and final cricket Test at the Basin Reserve ground here from Friday.

Any prospect of New Zealand pressurizing a pitch to deliberately favour seam bowlers was ruled out after the Indians praised Australian Brett Sipthorpe''s work.

Stockholm  - Damage to Swedish-funded projects in Gaza during the recent fighting there totalled some 2.3 million dollars, according to a survey published Wednesday.

The estimate was presented in a report commissioned by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency.

Consultant Johan Brisman, who conducted the study, added that "repair costs can be estimated to be between 2 and 4 times that amount."

Durban, Apr 1 : The Indian Premier League going to be held in South Africa will mainly be a television product for the Indian market and the crowd attendances will be no more than a bonus, according to a former cricket administrator.

Arthur Turner says that hosting of IPL in South Africa is not a coup for the country as the tournament was shifted out of India due to security reasons.

Berlin - German banks and industry issued a joint appeal Wednesday on the eve of the G20 summit for Berlin to help banks write off toxic debts, so as to restore health to the credit sector.

Germany has so far resisted calls for the public sector to set up a "bad bank" to take over under-performing debts and allow banks to start afresh with balance sheets stripped of shaky loans, but the government has not set out what else it might do.

London, Apr 1 : Students speak 64 languages at one of Britain's most multi-cultural schools with majority of them not speaking English, the native language of the country.

Four in five children at Woodside High in north London do not speak English as their first language

The Daily Star reports that many arrive at the school gates in Tottenham for the first time with virtually no understanding of our native tongue.

The revelation comes a week after MPs warned that one in seven children in the UK do not speak English at home.

According to the 'Indian Retail: Time to change lanes' report by global consultancy KPMG, the ongoing recession has taken a major toll on the dissemination of India's organized retail - with the country's retail sales growth falling drastically to 11 percent in December 2008 from the 2007 figures of 34 percent.